Launcher Support

FAQ

Launchers

Reboot your device and the widget will start working again. This appears to be a bug in iOS that
only affects a small number of users, but unfortunately still has not been fixed by Apple. We've filed
a bug report with Apple and we hope that they will fix this issue in future versions of iOS.

The number of launchers you can have per widget depend on the device and launcher size.
For non Pro Version users, the maximum number of launchers on iPhone is 7 and on iPad it is 11.
Here is a list of the maximum number of launchers allowed for Pro Version users:

Widgets have very limited memory and the more launchers you have, the more memory they take up.
If you exceed the memory limit of a widget, it will crash and stop loading. There are also
size limitations on widgets and for some devices and launcher sizes there simply isn't any room
for more.

NOTE: there is currently a bug in Launcher v3.0 and below where this graphic takes up the whole
screen on the new 10.5" iPad Pro. This will be fixed soon in v3.0.1.

That graphic is showing you how many more launchers you can have if you upgrade to the Pro Version.
If you click on it, it will take you to the upgrade screen where you can buy the Pro Version
in-app purchase.

Starting with version 2.0, you can automatically backup and manually restore launchers if you
have purchased either the Pro Version or Multiple Widget upgrades. Look for Launcher Backup/Restore
in the Options/Hamburger menu in the top left corner of the main screen. Enabling backup will
automatically backup changes made to your launchers to iCloud. You can then manually restore launchers to
any other device using the same iCloud account.

If you were able to launch an app from your lock screen without entering your passcode, that would be a
security hole because anyone would also be able to do the same thing on your phone. There is no way
for us to bypass that and we wouldn't want to if we could. If you want to not have to enter a passcode to
launch apps from your lock screen, you will have to disable your passcode entirely in the Settings app. Just
be aware that this makes your phone much less secure and we don't recommend it. Note that the Notification
Center can be pulled down at any time you are using your iPhone or iPad, and when you
use it outside of the lock screen, you will not have to enter a passcode to launch an app.

Don't worry, the "this is me" contact choice is only used during the intro to set up relevant contact
launchers for you. It is not saved or used elsewhere in the app so it's not a big deal if you accidentally
chose the wrong contact.

Some apps have a bug where they don't handle being launched from a widget properly and crash immediately
after being launched. There isn't anything we can do about this since the bug is in the launched app.
So if you encounter this, the only way it can be fixed is to report the bug to the developer of the app that is crashing.
Be sure to explain that it happens when their app is being launched from a widget so that they can properly
reproduce the issue. Here is a known list of popular apps that have this issue:

Sometimes apps change or remove their custom URL schemes which is the only way that one app can
launch another app. When that happens, the launcher for that app will no longer work. If this
has happened for one of your launchers, you can email us at the support link at the bottom of this
page and let us know the name of the app whose launcher is no longer working and we can look into it.

Creating/Editing Launchers

We still support tens of thousands of launchable apps. However, starting with Launcher v3.0, Apple
forced us to stop checking if all launchable apps are installed, even though this was a very useful
feature that made it much easier to create new app launchers. We can now only check if a few top apps
are installed, which is what you will see in the Installed list initially. You must now search for an
app by name before we can check if it is installed or not and then you can create a launcher for it.
We are sorry for this inconvenience going forward.

There is a technical limitation in Apple's iOS which doesn't allow third party apps to
launch all other apps. The target app needs to provide functionality to allow this.
We've worked hard to compile a list of apps that allow this, but not all apps do.
If you would like to suggest an app that you would like to see added, please fill out this form:
https://cromulental.appspot.com/suggest/
NOTE: Upgrading to the Pro Version will not give you any more launchable apps than the free version,
but it will unlock the magic launchers.

Apple rejected an app update and told us they would remove Launcher from the App Store if we didn't
remove the Settings app launchers. So starting with Launcher v2.2.7, we no longer list Settings app
launchers in the app. Note that existing Settings launchers continue to work in iOS 10, but no longer work in iOS 11.

Every week or so. We update the
list on the server side, so you don't have to wait for a new version of the app. If an
app you want isn't supported, feel free to check back often to see if it has been added recently.

A Contact Launcher involves launching an app that uses information from a contact such as a phone number,
email address or street address. Examples include calling someone, emailing someone, or getting directions
to someone's house. An App Launcher is a launcher for all other apps and app actions that don't involve
contact information.

A Custom Launcher is a launcher where you specify the custom URL yourself. It is recommended only for
users who know what they are doing and want to launch a custom URL that they know about that isn't
currently included with Launcher.

Launcher uses the "tel" scheme to dial the phone in the Phone launcher. This is the only way to start phone
calls on an iPhone from a third party app. Apple has added a restriction in tel: links that disallows
both the asterisk (*) and pound(#) characters. Here is their explanation on the issue:

"To prevent users from maliciously redirecting phone calls or changing the behavior of a phone or account, the
Phone app supports most, but not all, of the special characters in the tel scheme. Specifically, if a URL contains
the * or # characters, the Phone app does not attempt to dial the corresponding phone number."

Starting in version 1.3 you can do this by adding the Home Screen launcher. This launcher will
start up the Launcher app which will then disappear, revealing the home screen. Note that this
is the only way this can be accomplished.

Instead of launching Safari for the given URL, Launcher will do an HTTP GET to the URL. There
are very few people who would ever need this option, but there are some home automation devices
that can be controlled by hitting certain URLs. So don't enable this option unless you really
know what you are doing.

Yes, starting with v2.0, Launcher supports both (rounded) square and circle icons for all launchers. If you
prefer circular icons, you can choose that as the default in Options (top left button in main screen) ->
Global Settings. If you wish to switch individual launchers between circle and square icons, you can do this
by tapping on the icon in the launcher edit screen.

If you are running iOS 9 or higher, apps that we've added recently won't show up as installed until we release a new version of Launcher.

Sometimes apps remove or change their URL schemes that are used to launch them

If you see the app listed in the All Launchable list and it says it doesn't appear to be installed, you can select the
"Create Anyway" option and see if the launcher works or not. If it works fine, then it was probably reason #1 and you can
continue using the launcher. However, if you get and error message or the app doesn't launch properly, then it is likely
reason #2. In this case, you can contact us at the support address below and we can look into whether we can update the
URL scheme to one that works or not.

BTW, starting with Launcher v2.2.4, there are options for many different contact launchers including WhatsApp and Telegram.
And starting with Launcher v3.0, there are options for popular email clients like Airmail, Gmail, Outlook, Spark and more.

We'll look into a way to add more multi contact options in the future, but for the time being you can edit the existing options
to launch any URL you want. For instance, you can update the Mail icon to launch your favorite mail client instead.

To do this, first enable the "Show URL on launcher edit" switch in the Options -> Global Settings menu.

Then edit a launcher to email your friend with your favorite email client. Copy the URL in the URL field.

Then edit the multi contact launcher you want to update. Delete the existing Mail row, if any, and add a new Custom Launcher row.
In the URL field, paste the URL you copied from the other launcher. Tap on the icon to change it to the mail icon.

Multiple Widgets

Multiple widgets are supported on every device except the iPhone 4S due to space constraints. Also note that
an iPad 2 doesn't support geo fencing, so the widget location option is not available on it.

Starting in v2.0, there are multiple Launcher widgets and they have configurable names to tell them apart. Purchasing
the multiple widgets or the pro version upgrade allow you to configure the widget names or hide them. The default widget name
is "free" if you haven't purchased either upgrade and "main" if you have. You can hide this label by loading the Launcher app
and tapping on the widget settings button in the bottom left and enabling the "Hide name in widget" switch.

Sorry, but those names are hard-coded into the app when it is created and cannot be changed. This is a system limitation we have
no control over. You can set names for each widget in the widget settings screen and those will show up at the bottom of each widget.

There are some limitations on time/day based widget scheduling. The main one is that the timing is controlled via messages
sent from a server to your device, so you must have a good Internet connection at the time the widget is scheduled to show or hide.
Here is a list of issues that can cause widget visibility problems:

Device isn't connected to the Internet when widget visibility changes.

Right after a reboot, you may need to wait 5-10 minutes.

If the device is in Low Power Mode, it won't set the visibility correctly. You can check this in the Settings app -> Battery.

Launcher app was force closed by swiping up in the app switcher. If you have to force close Launcher for some reason,
it is best to run it again manually, otherwise it cannot change widget visibility in the background.

Make sure that Background Refresh is enabled globally and for Launcher. You can check this in the Settings app -> General -> Background App Refresh.

Make sure that the date/time is set properly on device. Set clock to auto set in the Settings app -> General -> Date/Time.

Note that the widget visibilty should be immediately fixed by running the Launcher app.

An iBeacon is a device that emits a signal which can be received by your iOS device. Starting in Launcher v2.1,
you can use proximity to an iBeacon device to show or hide a launcher widget. This is similar to setting a
widget to show or hide based on a location on a map, but because an iBeacon has a limited signal
range, it can be used to define smaller area ranges to set the visibility of a widget. Some iBeacons are also
portable.

This means that you can use an iBeacon to show or hide a Launcher widget in different areas of a large home or office.
Or you can put an iBeacon in your car so that you can have a widget that only appears when you are inside it.

Note that there are many iBeacons on the market, but only iBeacons that expose (or let you set) their Proximity UUIDs
can be used with Launcher. We recommend Rad Beacons by Radius Networks as a decent, cost effective iBeacon solution that
is compatible with Launcher. They can be purchased through
Amazon,
other retailers, or their own website.

Unfortunately this is not possible. The app has to wake up in the background to show or hide the widgets. This is
possible to schedule at a certain time or based on location, but there isn't a way to wake the app up based on
a Bluetooth or Wifi connection. Apple's Reminder app can alert you when you get in or out of your car, but
Apple doesn't allow third party apps access to this feature currently.

Just drag and drop the launcher onto the closed folder on the main screen. The icon should shrink slightly and when
you drop it, you'll see it drop into the folder. Or you can use the copy button in the top right hand corner of the
launcher edit screen to copy a launcher to another widget or folder.

With the folder open, drag and drop the launcher outside of the folder frame and that will close the folder and pop
the launcher out into the main screen. If your current widget is at the maximum number of launchers, this won't work
and you'll have to remove a launcher in the widget first. Or you can use the copy button in the top right hand corner
of the launcher edit screen to copy a launcher to another widget or folder.

Launcher Triggers

The launcher trigger icon appears in the top left corner of the widget edit screen on trigger-compatible launchers.
Only launchers that can be launched from the app are trigger-compatible, so several system launchers that can only be
launched from the widget cannot have triggers added.

Currently there are two known issues with triggers not firing properly:

If you have multiple geo triggers for the same location, there is a bug in iOS that results in them not firing properly.
An example of this would be if you had two different launchers, one set to trigger when you arrived home and another to trigger
when you leave home. In this case both triggers may fire when you arrive home and neither will fire when you leave.
We've filed a bug with Apple on this and hope they will fix it eventually.

A workaround for this issue is to create a duplicate location for each launcher trigger. So on one launcher,
set it to arrive at your home location and then create another duplicate location for your home and use
that for the second launcher trigger.

Launcher for Apple Watch

As long as your watch is paired to your phone and the Launcher Apple Watch app is installed on your watch, you will see
a button labeled "Apple Watch" in the Options menu of the Launcher app on your phone which you can use to configure the
Launcher Apple Watch app.

The Apple Watch attempts to save energy by only transferring data occasionally and in batches. This means that it can sometimes
take up to 20-30 seconds for all icons to transfer from your phone to the watch. Making lots of changes at once can sometimes
overwhelm the data transfer. If you want to force the watch app to reload all icons, toggle the "Hide Launcher Labels" switch
under Apple Watch Settings and wait up to 30 seconds..

The Apple Watch attempts to save energy by only transferring data occasionally and in batches. This means that it can sometimes
take up to 20-30 seconds for all icons to transfer from your phone to the watch.

Special Launchers

Curently there are 3 meta launchers: Maps, Google Maps and Waze. Once added, clicking on a meta
launcher will instantly create a new launcher which will give you directions to your current location.
This is handy if you travel a lot and want to have a launcher to get directions back to a place such as your
current hotel.

Think of Magic Launchers as app launchers that not only launch a certain app, but also
show some useful dynamic data at the same time. The Calendar Magic Launcher shows the current
day at all times and can launch a number of different calendaring apps. The Uber Magic Launcher
can show you the time estimate for a car and when tapped will launch Uber and request a ride (after
confirmation).

The Wifi Magic Launcher shows the number of bytes up/down in the last second for only the Wifi interface.
The Mobile Magic Launcher shows the number of bytes up/down in the last second for only the Mobile/Cellular interface.
The Network Magic Launcher shows the number of bytes up/down in the last second for both the Wifi and the Mobile/Cellular interface.

Unfortunately a change that Apple made in iOS 11 resulted in an issue in the memory magic launcher that we haven't
been able to fix yet, so it is currently disabled and you are no longer able to create new ones. We hope to be able to
add it back once the issue has been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Yes, starting with Launcher v3.0, there is now an "auto-update" option on music launchers created from playlists. The playlists are updated in the background when possible, but won't necessarily update immediately.

The music is being played through the normal Music app. So you can load the Music app, go to Now Playing and hit
the pause button. Alternatively, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to reveal Control Center which has
a pause button. If you upgrade to the pro version, you will be able to add music controls which contain a pause and
skip buttons in the widget itself.

A widget can't be any taller than one screen length. For certain devices and launcher sizes, if you are using
up all of your launcher rows, there might not be any space left for the music controls. You can do any of the
following to make room for the music controls:

Reduce the size of your launchers

Hide launcher labels

Delete enough launchers to make space

iOS 11

This is a new security restriction that Apple added to widgets in iOS 11. There was evidently a malicious app that forced
people to call 911 (emergency services), so now every phone call made by a third party app has to be
confirmed by the user. I've filed a request with Apple to make this feature less annoying by only confirming each
phone number once and not prompting again once it has been confirmed that the user wants to call the specified number,
but they have yet to change this implementation. Feel free to contact Apple and let them know that this new security
feature is making your phone less useful for you and hopefully they will improve it soon.

Apple removed the ability to launch the Settings app to specific screens starting with iOS 11. The only way to get
back the old functionality would be to downgrade back to iOS 10 while you still can. I'm sorry about this loss in
functionality, but there isn't anything we can do on our end.

This is something that Apple has added in iOS 10 to make sure that users realize that they are leaving the app that
they are currently running. Luckily this dialog is only shown once per target app, so once you tap "Open" you will never see
it again for that app.

This is a bug that affects the widgets in the Notification Center and the Lock Screen starting with iOS 11.
I filed a bug to Apple on this issue back in June, but they still haven't fixed it.
The only workaround at this time is to launch the app again from the widget and it will work going forward
because the confirmation dialog only pops up the first time you launch a new app launcher.

This is a design change that Apple made in iOS 11 which unfortunately makes it harder to access widgets.
They made this same change back in iOS 10, but then reverted it in iOS 10.2. I'm hopeful they will decide
to revert this change again. Feel free to send Apple feedback asking them to change the behavior back to
the way it used to be.

Starting in iOS 10 the compact size of the widgets is the minimum size of the widget and you can't make
widgets shorter than that. Sorry. I've filed a bug with Apple on this issue asking them to allow for shorter
widgets, but haven't heard anything back from them yet.

Apps not yet created for iOS 10 have a dark background and new apps compiled for iOS 10 have a light background.
The light background is the new standard and you'll see more and more widgets with it, including all of the
built-in Apple ones.
There is now an option to set Widget Dark Mode in Options -> Global Settings if you prefer a darker background.

Launcher (and all third party apps) can only use custom URL schemes to launch other apps. And unfortunately the code that
executes 3D-touch home screen quick actions is different than the code that gets executed when an app is launched via a
custom URL scheme. It's possible that the app supports those actions in both their quick actions and via their custom URL scheme,
but unless they have documentation of the URL scheme, we can't launch it from Launcher. If you discover useful actions
that can be launched via custom URL schemes that we don't have yet in Launcher, though, please let us know and we can add them.

Pro Version

If you upgrade to the pro version you add many more launchers (maximum number varies by device) and you get
to choose from 3 different sizes of launcher icons and gain the ability to hide the launcher labels. You
also unlock the Magic Launchers which show dynamic information such as current weather conditions and disk space
on your device. Starting with v2.0, the Pro Version also allows you to backup and restore launchers to iCloud
and it allows you to either set a custom name for the widget or hide the widget name. Starting in v3.0, you also unlock folders.
You also support continued work on Launcher.